Echoes of Us (3 page)

“Why’re they still here, then?” I said wearily.

Peter laughed. Quietly, tiredly, but laughter all the same. “Marion came prepared. She has something we want, and she knows it.”

There was something off in the way Peter looked at us. Something that sent warning bells thundering in our chest, knocking against our heart.

“What?” I said.

He paused. As if he needed a moment to convince himself that Addie and I could handle whatever it was he had to say.

“What is it, Peter?” I demanded.

“It’s Jackson,” he said. “She says she knows how to rescue Jackson.”

J
ackson’s full name was Jackson Montgomery. But Addie and I didn’t learn that until months after we met him. Our first day at Nornand Clinic, he’d been nothing but a delivery boy who stared at us with too much curiosity. We’d been the new hybrid in a psychiatric ward; there was plenty to wonder about.

We didn’t discover Jackson’s real purpose until he pulled us into a janitor’s closet and whispered the truth: he and Peter were going to rescue us. Later, after the escape, we learned about Vince, the other soul sharing his body. We learned, through them, how to temporarily disappear from our body. They introduced us to Sabine and her group. Gave us a purpose. Delivered us from the suffocation of our own safety net.

In the midst of all that, Addie fell in love with the boy with the pale blue eyes and the too-long hair and the match-strike smile. Then he betrayed us both, and while she was still figuring out the pieces of her broken heart, officers arrested him brutally in the streets.

We still had the footage Kitty accidentally recorded of Jackson’s arrest. We hadn’t watched it—hadn’t even taken it anywhere to be developed. But the cartridge sat buried at the bottom of our suitcase.

“Jackson?” Addie said. The rush of her emotions manifested themselves in the cramp of our stomach, the aching in our chest.

Peter had caught the switch in control. It wasn’t always visible, especially to someone who wasn’t looking for it. But Peter was hybrid. He knew the signs.

“That’s what she’s claiming,” he said.

“Does she have proof he’s alive?”

“She says she does.” Peter studied us. Weighed us. “She says she’s met with him. She says she has a message from him. And she’ll only give it to you.”

Addie and I found Marion Prytt in the kitchen, standing at the counter with Dr. Lyanne and Wendy. The three of them nursed mismatched mugs. No one actually drank.

Marion was about Dr. Lyanne’s age—late twenties. There was a starkness about her narrow face, a lack of color. But her eyes lit up at the sight of us.

“You must be Addie.” Her voice was oddly breathy, with a rasp to it. When she moved toward us, Dr. Lyanne twitched as if she wanted to intercept her. She didn’t, and Marion smiled as we shook hands. “I’m Marion Prytt. It’s lovely to finally meet you.”

“Finally?” Addie said. Our eyes flickered to Dr. Lyanne. “You’ve heard a lot about us?”

From what we’d heard about ourself on the news, it seemed impossible anyone would think it
lovely
to meet us. But if Marion really was a reporter with the government connections it took to know of Jackson’s whereabouts, perhaps she knew more about Addie and me than what the television broadcasted.

“Well, not a lot, of course.” Marion’s delicate features flexed with every expression she put on and shed. “But enough. Some from the information that the government’s released about you. Some from Jackson.”

Peter wedged himself in beside us in the small kitchen. “You said you had a message from him.”

I hesitated.

I didn’t know how, but I wanted to protect her from whatever Marion was about to say. Shield her from the pain it might cause.

Addie was nothing but a wire of nerves, stretched to breaking.

Marion spoke as if there were no one in the kitchen but her and us. “He wanted to tell you to keep hope. And to remember when you went sailing.”

I started to say. But our fingers tightened around the edge of the kitchen counter, and Addie barked out a helpless, breathless laugh.

she whispered.

The phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” Dr. Lyanne said, and slipped past us, out the door.

“Does that sound like Jackson, Addie?” Peter’s expression was gentle. As far as I knew, no one had told him about Addie and Jackson. But close quarters and high tensions weren’t conducive to secrets. They shuddered through cracks, seeping from one person to the other.

Our teeth ground into our bottom lip. But Addie nodded.

I didn’t say anything, not even in the shared privacy between our minds. I understood the message to
keep hope
. It was what Jackson had told us at Nornand. It was something I’d said back to him during our mission to save the officials at Powatt from Sabine’s bomb.

But in all the months we’d known each other, we’d never gone sailing.

I’d never gone sailing. Apparently, Addie had.

“Peter.” Dr. Lyanne stood in the doorway. There was a brightness in her eyes, and her cheeks were strangely flushed.

Peter took one look at her and left our side, motioning for us to stay put. He and Dr. Lyanne disappeared into the living room.

I said. Addie glanced over our shoulder, but Peter and Dr. Lyanne were too far away to see.

Something was always feeling wrong, nowadays. The sensation itched like a woolen cloak against bare skin. I couldn’t throw it off.

“Has he told you?” Marion said.

Addie looked back toward her. “Sorry?”

“Peter.” Marion spoke too softly for her voice to carry beyond the kitchen. “About Darcie Grey. About the footage.”

Our expression must have been answer enough. Marion took a small step toward us, like we were some wild animal she might startle into fleeing. “There’s a fourteen-year-old hybrid girl named Darcie Grey. She lives a few hours east of here, near Bramfolk. She’s just been discovered.”

I almost laughed at her choice of words. Back in Lupside, there had been a girl in our class who wanted to model. In eighth grade, she was chosen for some fashion show in Bessimir City, and came to school beaming about how she’d been
discovered
.

She’d moved away the next year, so I didn’t know how things turned out for her. Probably a hell of a lot better than they would for Darcie Grey.

“I think your people could help her,” Marion said.

“My people?”

Marion shifted her weight. Her crisp, seafoam blouse wrinkled as she shrugged. “It’s what Peter does, isn’t it? And I’m sure he has a lot of help. He can’t possibly be doing all this on his own.”

Addie frowned. “All what?”

“All, you know . . .” Marion made some vague hand gesture at the house around us. “This—”

“He saves kids,” Wendy said. It was the first words Addie and I had heard her say, and they sent a shock through our body. Wendy fiddled with her short, dark hair, tucking it behind her ears. “He saved you, didn’t he?” she said.

When Addie didn’t immediately answer, Wendy set down her mug. It clinked against the counter. “You never met my sister?”

The question had a practiced air to it, like it was something she’d rehearsed asking.

“No,” Addie said tightly. We’d used Anna as a symbol, but Anna had been a flesh-and-blood girl with flesh-and-blood family. A member of it stood in this kitchen in an oversized winter coat and a dark purple sweater.

“But you knew someone who did,” Wendy said.

Maybe we should have denied it. Probably, it would have been safer to deny it. But staring at this girl, we couldn’t.

“Yeah,” Addie whispered. “I did.”

Wendy’s entire body stiffened. Then she smiled. Just a tiny bit. This was all it took for her to have a little happiness: to know a girl who knew a girl who knew her sister after she was taken away.

It was better than nothing at all.

“I’m sorry,” Addie said, looking from Wendy to Marion, “but I don’t understand what this all has to do with me. Or Darcie Grey.”

Marion drew a small envelope from her purse and held it out to us.

“Wendy wants to help people like her sister.” Marion sounded earnest enough. A little too earnest. There was something overly shiny about it. “So do I. Maybe you can’t tell, stuck in this house in the middle of nowhere, but the country is getting riled up. People are questioning things they haven’t had to doubt in decades. They’re searching for answers. Things could go very badly for hybrids. But they could also go very well, if the right cards are played.”

Inside the envelope was a photograph. We could only see the white backside, where someone had written, in neat cursive:
Darcie. Soccer championships.

“A story like the one I want to tell about Wendy and Anna—about what happens to hybrid children in this country—it’s something that’s never been done before. No one’s ever dared to. But it’ll be worth it. People need concrete pictures, Addie. They can’t just be left to
imagine
what it’s like in an institution. They have to
see
it.”

Addie flipped the photograph over and stared at the glossy image. Marion hesitated. “I need someone on the inside.”

Darcie Grey had wavy, light blond hair and brown eyes. Darcie Grey had freckles and a small nose and thin lips.

Darcie Grey looked like us.